195806
Feng Mengbo
冯梦波
Production date
2015
Object Detail
Media
video (colour, sound)
Measurements
33 min 5 sec
Notes
195806 (2015) is a 33-minute video that juxtaposes electronic noise and music with shots of water dripping down a window — blurry vistas of a dreary landscape give way to ambiguous imagery of fig shrouded forms that might be bodies lying in a bleak street. A memory, or a dream? In fact, Feng’s images are taken from an educational wall chart instructing citizens how to defend themselves against a nuclear attack, designed in a typically Soviet Socialist Realist style and published in September 1958. China successfully developed and exploded its first atomic bomb on 16 October 1964, six years after the publication of the wall chart: the title of the work refers to those two facts. The darkening of the imagery, the slow fades and dissolves, and the rainwater running down the glass make it seem, says the artist, as if ‘time has been solidified.’ Adding to this uncanny atmosphere, the soundtrack incorporates heartbeats from Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, a synthesised voice intended to sound like a mysterious message sent through short-wave radio by aliens, and the opening song of ‘Futureworld’, the first foreign science fiction film ever released in China, in 1979.
Accession number
2016.009