Documentation Videos at Biennale this Week

KOCHI:
A new package of movies under the Kochi-Muziris Biennale begins on Tuesday, screening select documentary films amid their transition to a digital era. The five-day segment, curated by writer-artist-producer Li Zhenhua, will be held at the Pavilion in Fort Kochi’s Cabral Yard that is a key venue of the 108-day art festival.

Titled ‘Documentation in Digital Humanities’, the February 5-9 series of the Artists’ Cinema will open with ‘There’s a Strong Wind in Beijing’ by Ju Anqi. The next evening (Feb 6) will show ‘Poet on a Business Trip’, also by Ju. This will be followed by ‘I am Chinese’ (Feb 7) by Shen Shaomin, ‘The Swim’ (Feb 8) by He Xiangyu and ‘Mrs. Fang’ (Feb 9) by Wang Bing. The series features video art and documentary works created in the year 2017-18 from China and Hong Kong.

Curator Li, as founder of Laboratory Art Beijing and films curator at Art Basel Hong Kong, is a multi-media artist who splits his time and practice between China and Zurich. The films in this series portray the dilemma of the present time as one being in a state of transition, he says.

“In our time, which is also the time of speed and change, images and sounds moving and floating at grotesque pace, we may stop thinking about the idea of films nostalgically and explore the meaning and construction of image as it stands and would stand in the future,” Li says. “Documentation preserves our artistic and anthropological perspectives and issues of humanities which are far away from the truth.”