Bach Worm
Bai Ye
白夜
Production date
2012
Object Detail
Media
video (colour, sound)
Measurements
1 min 49 sec
Notes
This work was developed from edited footage of two separate videos of Xi’an street lights shot at night: the first was shot from the Textile Art District to Drum Tower Square; the second one is focused on a traffic light changing through its cycle of red to green. Bai Ye Says, ‘Xi’an is developing so fast and it feels like the unstoppable force of a big wave, bringing with it an unpredictable future and destroying people’s everyday lives and spiritual beliefs.’ Street lights thus become a symbol of the city, themselves multiplying constantly and following city’s expansion in time and space. The two segments of video footage are combined, overlapping as if they are resisting and consuming each other in time and space. They represent the overwhelming and boundless energy of the city. Bai Ye loves the city’s dynamism but worries about this constant change: ‘There is a very strong top-down force in the urban space that controls the people who live there: their excitement, worries, fear and anxiety, their emotional swings are so tightly connected with urban development.’ The jumpy, nervous energy of the metropolis is evident in the video, which is filled with little pulsing coloured shapes that resemble the paths of worms, caterpillars and flying insects crawling and hopping jerkily in and out of the frame.
Accession number
2013.113