Chewing Gum Paper
Cheng Ran
程然
Production date
2011
Object Detail
Media
single channel video (colour, sound)
Measurements
2 min 12 sec
Notes
Chewing-Gum Paper (2011), an early work for which he was awarded ‘Best Video Artist’ by Randian magazine in 2012, reveals Cheng’s hypnotic dream-like approach to the moving image. The video was shot in a recording studio. Balls of silver paper made from chewing-gum wrappers tremble on the vibrating surface of a drum, sometimes jumping in response to distorted audio sliced from Martin Luther King’s famous 1963 ‘I have a dream’ speech. The juxtaposition of sound and image is contradictory, jarring. The effect is mysterious, beautiful, yet strangely disturbing: the jittery movements of the silver balls of crumpled paper evoke the passionate response of a crowd, yet we are left with a sense of pointlessness as they are activated into aimless motion by the vibrations of a voice from the past, an echo of a long-gone historical moment.
Accession number
2015.215