The urban changes in China in the nineties are so fast that the feeling of alienation from one's own city in just one generation is not uncommon. The old hutongs are pulled down and in their place new shopping and living complexes made of glass and cement spring up throughout the country. Many Chinese artists, like Zhang Wand and Zhand Dali, are inspired by this feeling of being uprooted. Both 'Broken Mirror' and 'My Motherland made Scene for Me' use video and a mirror to show two sides of this reality. It is a claw hammer that smashes the mirror into pieces or a reflected clapperboard stating 'Song Dong Art Travel Agency Films LTD' that shows the other side. The images of the fifty-year anniversary of the People's Republic of China in 1999 of the lighted high-rise architecture on Dongchangán Jei and Jianguonnei Dajei avenues which lead to Red Square in Beijing in particular show the total change in the motherland. For this video is for Song Dong a visual medium which encompasses the possibility of expressing the Taoist ideas of existence/non-existence. Or as he puts it: "Video is something you can see, but can't touch." Song Dong, who started as a painter, has been developing this principle since 1994 through using video, performance and installations. In his videos he investigates his relationship with his close culture, often using the projection of either new or earlier recorded realistic video material. Examples of this are the videos 'Father and Son 1', 'Family Members' and 'Clone'. That this feeling of non-existence has lasting value for him is apparent from his journal, which he has kept daily since 1995, writing with water in calligraphy on a flat stone.
– Johan Pijnappel |
Song Dong, 1966, Beijing (China)
Lives and works in Beijing (China)
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