Black-White Song Village (Hei Bai Song Zhuang) - Zhao Tie Lin

The Chinese avant-garde art movement in the last two decades is probably one of the most unique events in the art history that deserves some attention of the future historians. It is still unclear whether this movement would leave behind any significant works that would be long remembered, but study of this unusual phenomenon would shed some light on some very basic questions about art: Why do people make art, sometimes against all odds and out of all kinds of madness? What is the function or role of art in a society that is rapidly transforming itself? How does art survive and move from fringe to the center?

Zhao TieLing’s new book, Black-White Song Village, is not an ambitious project to set about to answer these big questions. Instead it focused on daily life of a dozen free-lance artists who live and work in a rural village on the outskirt of Beijing, which has also been compared to early SoHo in New York or Montmartre in Paris. The village is not the first congregated living environment for Chinese artists. As early as 1990, YuanMingYuan Painter’s village was once made quite famous due to over-exposure to media. The artists in that village were eventually dispersed when the district government decided to clean up the neighborhood. Quite a number of them moved further away from Beijing and settled in Song Village. Over the time the village grew in reputation and became a magnate for artists of all kinds, some of whom have already been well established internationally, while most of others are struggling and little known.

Zhao selected a range of characters and devoted one chapter to each of them. Mixing dialogues with black-white snapshots, he used the usual photojournalistic format. The style of the dialogues runs from casual chitchatting to serious conversation on art. The photo shots are usually candid and intimate. The featured artists, often seen from the back and at a low angle with light lit behind, rarely stared straight into camera and did not seem to even notice the camera’s presence. If they did happen to look at the camera, they appeared slightly coy. Zhao must have got to know them fairly well in order to shoot at such a close distance. The artists were chosen not by their success but by how well they represent certain group or certain hierarchy in the village. They often had more interesting stories to tell, although some of them seemed to waster their time away in the village because it offered an isolated utopia where irresponsibility and craziness could be tolerated. Zhao’s intention is quite clear: He wants to give a more comprehensive view with their most private moments. Observant but not intrusive, these pictures give no embellishment of such kind of bohemian life but shows the unpretentious and the unforgiving sides.

Zhao was trained as a computer scientist but had a true passion for photo-journalism. After a few years in Computer Science Institute in Beijing, he gave up on science and devoted himself full-time to photography when he was well into his 40s. In the early 90s this could be seen as unusually rebellious and might have raised many eyebrows. From mid 90s, he published a series of books on marginal characters of the society: prostitutes, migrant workers, artists, people who exist outside the official system. It is a very rich and provocative vintage point: As China reformed itself from state-controlled socialism into a market driven free economy, more and more people left the land and old work units and ventured into migration without the official system to fall back on. Zhao wanted to document these changes and capture all the human dramas, both tragic and comical, with his lenses. By exposing the life of the poorest and most marginal characters, he also aimed to educate the prejudiced mainstream readers and hopefully bring changes to the system.

But with Black-White Song Village, Zhao hit a homerun since the material itself was highly relevant for his own artistic endeavors. His specialties, or his signature themes, are still there: The liveliest parts of the book are the anecdotes and life stories, narrated by the artists themselves. Their personalities and the hardships they encountered came well through the interviews. While letting the artists talked about their own ideas and strategies, Zhao also peppered his questions with his own thoughts on art and practice of art. He knew well that both the artists and himself faced the same questions : How can one maintain his atristic integrity while surviving in this market-oriented society? How does one pursue his/her individual freedom and financial success while remaining socially responsible? How far can one go in terms of self-promotion and making his/her works known? The answers are not so simple, and there may never be good answers.

As China continues to change and move forward, its internal art market is also slowly developing itself and the government also started to organize exhibitions and reform the art schools. Gone are the days when avant-garde artists had no other means to survive other than selling works outside China. Zhao’s first-hand sketches froze a particular time moment at a particular location, and his efforts would prove invaluable in the near future when the art scene could be entirely different from what is now. After all, the initial growth is often painful and slow and the pioneers often have a lot to pay.

Staging is Fun - Wang QingSong

Staged photography is all the rage now, and it is getting bigger and more expensive. Gregory Grewdson is probably one of the most prominent photographers specialized in this genre, using expensive equipments, a large crew and even Hollywood celebrities to create dark, surrealistic and suburbia epics. 

Jeff Wall, the Canadian who started this whole thing 20 years ago, stick to his more political themes, subtle but no less poignant. The Chinese artists apparently do not want to be left behind either: Wang QingSong, a photographer from Beijing and the brightest rising star, is taking New York art scene by a storm. Not only did New York Times use one of his images on last week’s magazine, it also dedicated an article about him on this Sunday’s art session, presenting it as a hard proof that Chinese modern art is catching up. Currently his works can be seen at his first New York solo show (Salon 94) and at the upcoming exhibition at ICP and Asia Society.

So what are all these buzzes about and why are the foreign curators so enthusiastic about him? I clicked through his website with these questions in my mind. I am usually a bit suspicious on Chinese artists who earned their fames in the West. Due to lack of official support in China and driven by greed, Chinese artists have a weakness to take shortcuts and cater to whatever the foreign art market wants. Some of them cashed out, while majority of them produced mediocre art and lost their true sense of creativity.

Regardless of any type of criticism, Wang’s images are definitely very impressive. They are very large prints (the longest is 31feet), eye-popping, colorful and story-telling. Any museum goer would be immediately drawn in by their sheer sizes, and he or she would not move away quickly because there are a lot to see and a lot to decipher. For western eyes, they can be both familiar and strange to look at. You may recognize Manet and Botticelli, you may know some Chinese famous paintings being referred but you won’t know which. The themes are inevitably both exotic and universal. To some degree this is the kind of modern Chinese art you expect to see (postmodernism practised using Chinese art tradition), but on the other hand, there are enough surprises to keep you engaged. The line between Western art and Chinese art is deliberately blurred here, and the visual and intellectual pleasures are abounded.

But Wang is not entirely original in his approaches. The lavish setting, the theatric posing and vibrant colors can be found in David La Chapella and Pierra et Gilles. The political pop and irony on commercialism have been overdone in the early to mid 90s by Wang Guanyi and a few others. The famila battle scenes were once staged by Paul Smith and Jeff Wall. The stitching of the scenes with help of photoshop to create long scrolls was probably first tried by Sam Taylor-Wood in her Five Revolutionary Seconds, and referring art history and famous paintings in staged photography is once specialty of Jeff Wall. But Wang is still the first one who combined all of above in his images, who borrowed Chinese art (both classic and revolutionary) so freely and in the end he formed his own particular vernacular to create visual wonders as well as a very dry but witty sense of humor to critique the absurdity of modern life (and the art world). Wang is very self-conscious. He can mock exactly what he intends to be.

My Visual Diary - Wang Xiao Hui

Chinese female artists, whom once went aboard and established themselves, would always rush back home and publish autobiographies, which typically feature success stories of conquering the West and tons of photographs of themselves schmoozing with foreign dignitaries. The Chinese saying, “returning home with all the glories”, applies perfectly well here: They have a lot to tell to their own people after all the loneliness, struggling and humiliations. After all, they succeeded in the West, and for Chinese people whose inferior complex still lingers after a colonial past, that means a bigger success than what can be achieved home.

Wang Xiao Hui’s “My Visual Diary” was first published in 2001 but has been printed more than ten times since then. I got a copy in Changsha this February, a month after I came cross her photobook “Close to Eyes” back in San Francisco. In the international art circuit, Chinese photographers are still rare species, and it is more unusual to have a published collection from prestigious art publishing house. My interest in her was thus elevated to the degree that I not only finished her book in a few days but also googled her and checked out most of her latest works. Wang is not a household name in the photography world, but her status is on the rise. Even if she may be still the second-tier artist in the scene, her success is an interesting phenomenon that deserves some analysis.

Unfortunately the book’s boastfulness almost distracts a reader from understanding her art. It babbles on like a psychiatrist’s patient who suffers self-esteem problems and relies on other people’s complements to feel good about herself. But the book serves its purpose for teenage girls who are not so exposed to photography but want so desperately to become an artist. It opens eyes for the more provincial and the less traveled. But for serious artists in-the-knows, even though the book helps give a roadmap on how Wang arrives at where she is now, it is not so artistically inspiring.

Wang came out of age in eighties and was one of very first batch of architecture college students after Cultural Revolution. She continued her graduate study in Germany under an official scholarship but her interest in photography and a few unexpected incidents pushed her to a completely different career path. From her own account, Wang showed artistic gift from an early age but it did not blossom until she got to Germany. The extensive traveling, the very nurturing environment supported by her husband and her friends, the unique position as the first few Chinese female artists in post-Cold-War Germany, and two rather tragic events that took place when she just started out as an artist (which includes a suicide and a fatal car accident of her husband), all contributed to her maturing into a true artist. Wang, like other prominent Chinese artists who gained their international fames in the nineties (such as Xu Bing, Cai GuoQiang, etc), belong to the same generation who went through much of their childhood and teenage years in Cultural Revolution and in a rather isolated society. All the new art movements developed in the West since the end of the World War II dazzled and stimulated them during their first few years of self-exiles. Driven by a sense of mission, they experimented and tried to adopt the new aesthetic strategies and combine them with various Chinese elements and traditions. Wang is not particularly so keen on making modern Chinese art. The Chinese influence in her photography is rather subtle and minor. But she does know how to ride on the curiosity of the West and take full advantage of their interest in her and her works. She takes it as her mission to represent well-educated, elegant and talented Chinese females. But in the meantime she still holds much of the traditional values from the past and feels awkward to cross any gender, political or sexuality boundaries. A few of her figurative works and her film “Shattered Moon” all expressed her own frustrations in her pseudo-feminist quandaries. 

Wang’s photography can be roughly separated into three phases. In her early days, from late 80s to early 90s, she was basically a good photographer. Self-taught and with a natural eye for composition and visual metaphors, she did mostly commercial photo projects. For much of the 90s she traveled more, shot films and her best works were portraits and human figures, in which she often used tricky lighting and long exposures, with focuses on eyes and human forms. From late 90s on, she discovered large color prints (which indisputably had put German photography in the center of attention) and started to make huge prints with abstract patterns. Abstraction is far from being new in photography. Generations of photographers have been using macro lenses to shoot floral or surface close-ups and render them into abstract expressionism. But the sheer sizes of the new abstract photography have made them much more impressive to look at. Wang was clearly inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe and Wolfgang Tillman and made her floral shots very sensual and decorative. There is something very consistent in all the stuff Wang did. They are always very beautiful and flawlessly composed, but for the price of good looks they lack spontaneity and wit, and sometimes even degenerate into clichés. Compared to other German photographers such as Thomas Struth and Andrew Gursky, Wang’s photography is short of intellectual substances.The most exciting contemporary Chinese photography still comes from China itself. The latest exhibitions on YangYong, Shao YiYong and Mu Chen at Goedhuis gallery, have shown very diverse set of visual language and potent political urgency. After all the postmodernism experiments and imitation in the late nineties, Chinese photographers have collectively made a quantum leap into the new century and pushed their individual styles much further than where they started. The art curators have taken the note and just started to organize shows and exhibitions to promote and showcase their works. The upcoming exhibition on Chinese photography and Video works at Asia Society and ICP New York would be an exciting and ground-breaking event to see true modern Chinese photography.

Taking Roots (Zha Gen) -- Han Dong

NanJing has always been an ideal place to produce writers. As the ancient capital for a few dynasties, it lacks no history and culture heritage. Situated close to Shanghai but still far enough, it gives itself enough metropolitan atmosphere but with much slower pace. In mid 80s there arose two very influential poetry groups: The one from ChenDu was called “MangHan”(Mucho Guys), and the other, from NanJing, was named “Ta Men” (They). Both groups made splashes with manifestos and reading gatherings and claimed to be antithesis of an earlier poetry movement called “Misty Group”. But by late 80s both groups had dissolved and most of the members went different directions. One of the major players, Han Dong, dappled into fiction-writing and stayed on the periphery of the poetry scene for a number of years. But his most famous poem, “About the Big Goose Pagoda”, remains the representative work from that period and has been quoted again and again:

About the Big Goose Pagoda
What else can we know
We climb up
And look at the scenery around
Then we come down
Big Goose Pagoda is a famous and the best-preserved Buddhist temple complex built around AD 600 in XiAn. Han Dong borrowed its historical meaning to tell readers that the world was neither as meaningful as was told nor as absurd as it seemed. It exists within your own perspective but also quite independent of you. Han Dong is an expert in revealing profound thoughts using the plainest language. He speaks with a cool and slightly detached manner, while his metaphors are masked between the most commonly-used words. An impatient reader may find them plain and banal, but once he gets it, he would feel the stir and occasionally certain enlightenment.

Han Dong’s debut novel, “Taking Roots”, was not published until 2003, when he was well into his 40s. It attracted more media coverage than any of his poetry works and won him the fiction prize of the second Chinese Literature Communication Awards (hosted by two major newspapers). In a time when most writers are focusing their attention on the contemporary and fast-changing China, Hang Dong chose to base his first novel on a particular period of Cultural Revolution, which has been an unpopular subject since the earlier “Wound Literature” period (late 70s to mid 80s). He dug out details from that period as well as many forgotten political terms coined up in the Cultural Revolution and gave a chronology of a sent-down family living in the rural northern JiangSu Province. Han repeatedly denied that the book was autobiographical, but by comparing the writer’s own life with what is described in the book, it is easy to believe that he used many of the real events and real characters he encountered. Although most of the book was told from someone who seemed to know everything about the family yet had nothing to do with them, the real point of view is from the grandson, who observed the six years of countryside life with fascination, fear and horror. In the very end, the book summarized the impact of the six years on the grandson, which, from my view, could be read as Han’s own:

The Tao family spent no more than six years in SanYu. After than Little Tao went to ShanDong for the college and only returned to NanJing for the summers. After graduation he was sent to another city and worked there for twenty years. Six years is neither big nor small proportion of his life, but LittleTao never dreamed of his home in NanJing, nor the blue-tiled-house in the HongZe county, or the HongWu Street 69 before the family were sent down. In the forty years, from south to north, for east to west, little Tao had been to many places, lived under many different roofs and had many different homes. But in his dream, there is only one home, which is the house in the SanYu village, with mud walls and tiles, built by his father from the scratch…...maybe that is the meaning of “taking roots”?

Han Dong went to great lengths to describe those six years, from the very first day how the family managed to adapt to the rural life, to the very end how they left the village with one deceased grandfather and terminally-ill father. Every story, every character, no matter how absurd they seemed, or how painful they could be, was always told without judgment or heavy charge of emotions, but always with plenty of details and senses of humor. The novel resembles his poetry, sharing similar narrative strategies and general atmosphere. As a novel, and especially as a semi-autographic novel, it planted more emotional punches than his poetry, but it still followed the anti-climax rule, narrating the most heart-wrenching scenes with disciplines and minimal words. If compared to Western writers, Raymond Carver may call to mind, whose pared-down and “dirty-realist” style probably had some influence on Han.

Much has been written about Cultural Revolution from several separate generations of writers. Depending on their age and experience, each wrote their works from different angles and under different motifs. Collectively they give a paranormal picture of a very unusual period of history in which lives of all social classes in every corner of China were changed or affected. Han’s “Taking Roots” filled one of the many gaps in this genre of writing. The depiction of a whole spectrum of characters explained Han’s own ambition to use this book to keep historical records for a bygone past. He embedded larger events in ordinary people’s life and showed both human resilience and human weakness. Yet, his sentiment is rather personal, his nostalgia is quite detectable, and the point of view never goes beyond Tao family. Han also aimed to use this book to come to terms with a childhood that changed him forever. In the end it should be read as literature instead of a history book.

Want to be Westernized? Bring on the Booze !

While reading Paul Bowles' travelogue in Turkey I came across the following paragraph:

Cannabis sativa and its derivative are strictly prohibited in Turkey, and the natural correlative of this proscription is that alcohol, far from being frowned upon as it is in other Muslim lands, is freely drunk...since the psychological effects of the two substances are diametrically opposed to each other. Alcohol blurs the personality by loosening inhibitions. The drinker feels, temporarily at least, a sense of participation. Kif abolishes no inhibitions; on the contrary it reinforces them, pushes the individual further back into the recesses of his own isolated personality, pledging him to contemplation and inaction. It is expected that there should be a close relationship between the culture of a given society and the means used by its members to achieve release and euphoria. For Judaism and Christianity the means has always been alcohol; for Islam it has been hashish. The first is dynamic in its effects, the other static. If a nation wishes however mistakenly, to westernize itself, first it gives up hashish. The rest will follow...

Bowles was definitely not the first one to compare alcohol and hashish. In the history of Marijuana, as early as in the 16th century, a poet from Baghdad, Mohammed Ebn Soleiman Foruli, wrote a well-known epic poem named Benk u Bode, which dealt allegorically with a dialectical battle between wine and hashish. And, even in the Castro crowd, there is a clear separation between the bar-hoppers (who consume alcohol in large quantities), the club druggies, and the stoners who prefer smoking pots and staying home. Any of them would give you the reason why they prefer one to the other. But Bowles could still be the first who associated the substance usage with cultures and westernization. If his theory holds true, does that mean the bar-hoppers are aggressive happy social butterflies, while the potheads are introspective and isolated from each other? And by further deduction according to Bowles, the bar-hoppers should be more “dynamic” in their personality and more “westernized” and thus holding some competitive advantage in this western society; and the potheads would be “static”, can’t cope with the change and would be left behind like the aged hippies. Then I am also wondering how we categorize the speed freaks and ecstasy addicts. They show enormous energy, openness and love when they are on. Does that mean they are more "westernized" than all the others?

There is a bit a truth in Bowles' assessment, but by close inspection, we see flaws in his logic. Bowles forgot that substance or alcohol always creates the illusions, which are elusive and don’t always relate to reality. Just like socially-inept person using alcohol to break the ice, a high-strung one may seek pot to calm down and relax. The effects are temporary, and they won’t change the personalities that easily (although sometimes they do). It is too simplistic to explain the culture differences by the usage of substances. On the contrary, why one drug is more popular in one society than in the others has complicated historical and cultural roots. The popularity of certain substance is the consequence instead of the cause. We can find many examples: the persistant chewing of qat in Yemen, the once ubiquitous opium dens in China, their rises and falls do not necessarily time with the westernization but actually act the otherwise.

Although Bowles lived in Morocco for his entire adult life and based almost all of his writings in third-world countries, he was a colonialist in his heart. As a sharp observer and an avid traveler, he was fascinated with “the other” and probably took a few lovers from the locals he encountered. But he remained critical of these cultures, which he constantly compared to the West and found them uncivilized, hostile and sometimes incomprehensible. The fear and distrust of Islam lies in the collective consciousness of the western mind, and Bowles was no exception.

Goodbye Dragon Inn - Tsai Ming Liang

Tsai, newly awarded with Medal of Honor by French government, is probably unknown outside film festival circuit. The slow pace and depressing themes have made his films not quite accessible for mainstream audiences. Even in Taiwan, he has trouble raising money for his new projects regardless of how critically acclaimed his previous films are.

His very first debut in 1992, Rebels of the Neon God, set the color and tone for all the following films he made. Working with the same actors and actresses and with loosely connected but largely different plots and settings, he created a bleak and oppressive world where his protagonists yearned for connections in vain and often set out for actions that only led to self-destruction and disappointment. 

Goodbye Dragon Inn is showing in this year's international film festival and it made me crave for a drink after it was over. All the signature styles of Tsai are here: Excruciatingly long shots, scarce dialogues, the desolate and dilapidated urban setting, heavy shadows and blinking lights. Even the tropical torrential rain, his favorite metaphoric subject, was pouring through the film. Loneliness, alienation, repression, the words that have been used to describe all his other films, fit perfectly well here. Beyond all that is the same nostalgia. The nostalgia is more explicit than ever: Dragon Inn, a popular martial-art film made in 60s, was showing through the film in the background. It represents a lost past, a death of cinema, an era when heroes and fairy tales still existed.

Gay subplots appeared frequently in Tsai's films. In Vive l'amour, in one scene the main character lied underneath the bed and was ultimately turned on while his object of desire was having sex with a woman. In The River, a father went to a bathhouse only to find out he almost had sex with his own son in the dark. Goodbye Dragon Inn also has one of the most intense and comical gay cruising scenes in cinema. But I heard Tsai himself is not gay. He is fascinated with gay sex probably because it gives him the best plot devices to portrait repressed desires and despairs for human intimacy.

All of Tsai's films can be seen as various explorations of the same theme. He never seems to succumb to the pressure of commercial films and stubbornly stick to his own vision and interpretation of the modern world. In the end, he finds himself a true artist who is revealing and continues to reveal the stark reality of modernization.

Belle and Sebastian

On one of the rare sunny summer afternoons in 1998 I came across an album named “Boys with Arab Straps” in Tower Records sample stations. I don’t remember whether it was the name or the album cover that caught my attention, but the curiosity of the moment led to my longest commitment to a band. The songs were catchy and moody, and the lyrics were witty and poetic, fitting perfectly well with my own sense of being on that day: Life is full of youthful adventures and excitements, with a hint of melancholy and nostalgia hovering on the horizon.

Over the six years I collected almost every album they released in North America. In the meantime they rose from an obscure Glasgow-based indie band to something much bigger, becoming kind of cult band for certain demographic section who deviate from more mainstream taste. It even made into the list of the music junkies in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. On the other hand, I found myself listening to them less and less, and the last album in 2002, a soundtrack written for Todd Solenz’s film of the same name, was largely uninspiring and forgettable. Just when I thought they would disappear without a trace like so many others, I found their latest album in my neighborhood music store. This time I had to ask the opinions of the staff who had an all-knowing look. Was it just as good as their old stuff? Yes, he said. But definitely a happier one.

Strangely enough, I do find myself liking this album a lot, even if it is slicker, more sugary and pop than any of their previous works. One of my favorite, Sleep On a Sunbeam, has lyrics like this:

Think about a new destinationIf you think you need inspirationRoll out the map and mark it with a pinI will follow every directionJust lace up your shoes while I’m fetching a sleeping bag, a tent...Another summer’s passing byAll I need is somewhere I feel the grass beneath my feetA walk on sand, a fire I can warm my handsMy joy will be complete

What happened to me? What was gripping on me and making me so high whenever I hummed these lines? Is this the sign of me still holding on to a belief when everything is still possible and life still holds infinite possibilities? Or, is it just the travel bug affecting me?So when Belle and Sebastian came to town and performed in Warfield last night, Diego got me a ticket so that I could see them live for the first time. It was a soldout show, proving its continuing popularity. The crowd was mostly white or Asian, comfortable middle-class kids who think they are cool and smart and rebellious. The vintage and retro style were everywhere, a step up from grunge and punk and a couple of years from becoming bobos. This same crowd would feed on bands like Nick Drake, Rilo Kely, White Stripes, Neutral Milk Hotel or Postal Services, and ironically they are all my favorite bands -- maybe I am just a make-believer among this groovy bunch, trying to make up for my missing part as a disenchanted but sophisticated American youth.

There was no surprise from the performance. Stuart Murdoch, the lead singer, was charismatic and funny and stayed as the soul of the band. Since so many different kinds of instruments were used, the stage seemed to be more densely populated than usual. The best moment came when four audience, all Berkeley-looking girls, jumped onto the stage and played weird percusion instruments while dancing for a very cheerful song. Your spirit was lifted, but your soul got barely touched.

I guess I would keep on playing Dear Catastrophe Waitress whenever I need to be cheered up. But I would probably grow out of it someday soon.

Lukas Felzmann & John Priola

Photo Alliance in San Francisco is a wonderful organization for photographers or collectors to communicate and study from each other. Their lectures typically feature one or two established local photographers whom would show their works and talk about why and how they made them. The audiences usually have the chance to get a very comprehensive view of a whole body of works within 90 minutes. Last night’s lecture by Bay Area photographers John Priola and Lukas Felzmann, which kicked off a three-day workshop on book-publishing, was especially good. It brought together two very different artists in the same classroom who are also excellent presenters.

Born in a Swiss intellectual family, Felzmann graduated from SF Art Institute and spent most of his adult life in Northern California. His works thus embodied the dual influences of West Coast landscape and German philosophical traditions. They fall naturally into the “New Topographics” movement, whose main players include Robert Adams, Stephen Shore and the Bechers. The photos from the new book LandFallwere mostly shot in Sacramento Valley, where human activities and natural force are in a perpetual tug-of-war. While the landscape continues to change due to manmade underpasses, highways, aqueducts and nonnative trees, the nature also gives back flood, landfall, and rural decays. Not only is Felzmann interested in documenting these changes, he is also captivated by their poetic potentials and philosophic meanings. His series on migration birds are some of the most unforgettable images. Using the formation of the flocks, he shows to us that nature is full of wonders, and it is often more than what we can grasp. As an avid reader, Felzmann seems to be obsessed with knowledge and learning. His many shots of books and classrooms seem to be an unusual lifelong hobby of his.

Priola, on the other hand, made most of his photos in his studio, often with very controlled lightings and meticulous settings. While Felzmannm focuses on the nature and its relationship with humankind, Priola is more obsessed with the sentimental values of objects and memories. If Felzmann observes the world with a detached and analytic eye, for whom God renders itself as a rational, scientific but formidable force, Priola, thanks to his catholic upbringing, gets more fascinated by its mystics and melancholy power. Priola came out of age in late 80s and 90s, when AIDS took away many of his friends. This intense emotional experience affected him significantly, and they showed up under various disguises in many of his works: objects from diseased ancestors, dead butterflies, a fallen flowerpot, an apartment number lit in night. They speak silently and powerfully on time and on the ghosts we can’t see.

Though both artists started with very different aesthetic visions and photographic practices, they have a lot more in common. Both have done installation works, both ponder on traces of time, and both shoot mostly black-and-white photos and rarely do portraits. They look at the world and at the most ordinary with shock and awe, and their works express this feeling of being overwhelmed. Inevitably, they would cross each other’s path: In Priola’s latest works, he shot the same set of trees as Felzmann did. But they don’t necessarily see the same thing.

L’AGE D’OR and UN CHIEN ANDALOU -- Luis Bunuel

Going to screenings of classic masterpieces is a good intellectual exercise to find out how they influenced more contemporary films and film makers. L’AGE D’OR and UN CHIEN ANDALOU, Luis Bunuel's two earliest films in colaboration with Dali, have been well discussed in the art history and in the context of surrealism. But they only get a chance to be shown side by side until very recently. So when Castro Theatre finally put them on this week, , we decided that we could not possibly miss this rare treat. As a Luis Bunuel fan, I watched most of his later and more famous films. These two films are the missing link towards understanding where he started and how he developed an artistic style that is still so talked about in every film schools.

I walked out the theatre playing name-dropping games with Diego. David Lynch came to our minds right away: The discovery of a single ear in the very beginning of Blue Velvet seemed to be a straight variation of the scene is Un Chien Andalou, when a piece of broken hand was lying on the street; and then inevitably the hot name Matthew Barney, whose Cremaster Cycles probably borrowed a few editing tricks and ideas from Bunuel. After all, all of them are obsessed with violence and sexual "deviances", aiming to subvert and shock. If David Lynch had to obey rules of narrative films driven more often by characters and plots, Matthew Barney went a lot further than Bunuel since he aspired to make real art without any consideration of an average theatre goer.

Another exercise while watching these two films is to recognize all the signature images and tricks of surrealism, thought-provoking and groundbreaking 70 years ago and still fresh and interesting at this moment. Body parts (eyeball, specifically, is always a surrealist's favorite), juxtaposition of discordant images, large live animals or nasty small insects, bizarre and illogical sequence of actions, etc. It still works well into the sub consciousness and invokes our deepest psychological reactions (fear and horror, primarily) after being used again and again and almost becoming cinematic clichés.

Manifesto

What is purpose of blogging? Self absorption? Existential crisis? Or, as one writer said, defiance of the time passing by? I also remember how one of my elder friends described a younger friend of his: He is one of those generation Y people who would keep on-line journals and put everything about himself there. A little pretentious, but damn smart and interesting. No, I don't exactly know why I want to start this. I doubt I would reveal everything about myself without any inhibition. That is not the point of writing. Whatever that point is, I would discover it from writting them, under the condition that I stay disciplined enough.

But the existential question is definitely one part of my thinking here. It was barely a hundred years ago when human voice got recorded for the first time. And now, all you have ever written, all the pictures ever taken of you, all the home videos ever shot about you, could be well stored in one tiny memory chip and preserved way past your own existence in this physical world. I could imagine that the future mausoleums or tombs not only store the ashes or bodies, but also a small chip with all the digital information about the departued person. Our future generation would be overwhelmed with information about their ancestors if they ever want to find out, unless, hm, you accidently crash your computer and lose all that stored information about yourself. But then, remember, they may be in a Yahoo or Google server too. This does make the life of future biographers or anthropologists a lot easier.

So, blogging, archiving, posting, they can be viewed as a means for leaving a trace in this ever-changing and fast-paced world, or more meaningfully, a way to help communicate our thoughts and understand each other, other than, say, to spread good gossips. But gossips are always fun to read, and in the end, who really cares?!