Timelapse, A Swiss-China Media Art Exhibition

• Source: Global Times
• [00:39 December 18 2009]
• Comments

Chat by Jin Jiangbo. Photo: Ren Zhe

By Wang Fanfan

The concept of time comes out of individual experience. Modern artists want to represent this perception of time in a way that connects human beings universally, despite their different cultural identities. Twelve artists from both Switzerland and China now bring this art feast to Beijing, giving local viewers not only aesthetic pleasure but also intellectual excitement.

If traditional artists record the accidental and ephemeral excitement in forms of paintings, sculptures and photos, the new media artists invite you to participate in their art, to witness a moment in the past which echoes your memory, or creates a new scene in the future through your imagination.

"In media art, the viewer's experience of time is an integral part of the work. The time based arts in particular operate with duration and the sense of being there – just as in music," said Alexander Hahn, a participating Swiss artist.

Chen Shaoxiong depicts a typical urban scene, the highway. A model trolley car drives on the track, along which ink drawings of random objects resemble billboards.

Three televisions show what's been recorded from the pinhole camera on the car: a box of books, a clock, a widely opened eye or a girl with a 1980s hair style.

"My whole project is a real-time recording apparatus. It imitates the way our memory works. Random images pass by our mind without sequence. We don't know when they start or end," said Chen.

In Jin Jiangbo's work Chat, irony speaks for itself. A dummy has fallen asleep on his computer with one of his hands still habitually twitching. Above him over 10 monitors are showing chat messages.

In Hu Jieming's installation Dozens of days, Dozens of years, time becomes the benchmark of erosion. Clothes are placed on an ironing board, under a UV lamp. The erosion of the clothes during the 26 days of the exhibition will be a snapshot of material decay in industrial civilization.