Untitled (The Festival)
Liu Chuang
刘窗
Production date
2011
Object Detail
Media
single channel video (color, sound)
Measurements
5 min 14 sec
Notes
Shot on Chinese New Year’s Day in 2011, Untitled (The Festival), was shown at the 10th Gwangju Biennale. Filmed in an industrial area of Dongguan, the artist applies himself to a seemingly unproductive mission. He lights a discarded roll of newspaper but, before it burns out, he uses it to light another, and then another. As he walks calmly along the debris-strewn street, the factories for once stand silent in the background. Liu says the work was originally inspired by seeing the Olympic torch relay on TV before the Beijing Olympics in 2008: ‘I observed that the fire had always been invisible during the [Olympic torch relay] broadcast on TV because on the one hand, the lens cannot always only focus on fire while the city landscape and crowds are also important components in the scenery; on the other, when it happened, it was always sunny, making it hard for the fire to be visible. So, when audience were watching it, they naturally assumed that the torch must have been lit and it was impossible that it would die down. In some way, the fire has been lighted within the audiences' mind. This is what I found fascinating.’
Accession number
2015.255