BY ART MATTERS 天目里美术馆 initiated a video project mediated by the four screens in the OōEli campus underground elevator hall.
About "Arbitrary Doors"
At a time when people are not able to travel far physically, we suggest finding a passage in arts — the sensibility used for seeing art, as well as the unique perspective presented in the works, allow us to look around and beyond the world through artists' eyes, and thus travel within imaginations. In 2022, the four screens are defined as "Arbitrary Doors" and will present four distinct modules throughout the year: "Right here, Right now"; "Easy Come Easy Go"; "Sky and Earth" and "To the past, to the future." You will be able to move through different territories and dimensions, breaking through the present barriers through any of the ever-changing doors, allowing for a quick release of the spirit.
2022.10.16 - 1.20 | To the Past, to the Future
"To the past, to the Future" is the final chapter of the annual project "Arbitrary Doors". This year, we have explored our surroundings, examined the relationship between the journey and the body, and connected with people from all over the world. Eventually, we will relook at the boundary between the self and consciousness, completing an internalized, metaphysical journey. "To the past, to the Future" presents two works of British artist Sapphire Goss, ATTIC WINDOWS OF THE INFINITE and SOMEWHERE BETWEEN UP THERE & DOWN HERE. Presenting images of the city and the universe through the texture of the expired film, the works explore the stagnation of time and the dissociation between memory and illusion, but also form a collision between distance and rhythm, constructing a drifting and blurred dream, guiding us to shuttle between the tangible and intangible, time and space.
Artist: Sapphire Goss
ATTIC WINDOWS OF THE INFINITE
2022
Digital film from analogue 35mm & 120mm negatives
30'34''
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN UP THERE & DOWN HERE
2021
Single-channel video
8’19’’
Archive
2022.7.16 - 10.15 | Sky and Earth
Horizons
Ruth Maclennan
2020-2021
Video series, colour, sound, loop - 14 laps in total
Horizons was created during the Coronavirus pandemic for the collective art project, The Crown Letter. Like so many, British-American artist Ruth Maclennan felt her horizons simultaneously shrink to the size of her neighbourhood and her home, and expand as her thoughts and dreams were filled with events and places far away. So she decided to make a collective film, inviting the Crown Letter artists, friends, family and others from around the world to film a panning shot of a horizon they could see and send it to her. She then edited the clips together to form a continuous, potentially endless landscape film. The film not only allows us to imagine the other side of the horizon-earth, but it also offers a vision of overcoming barriers and reconnecting with people across the world.
During this exhibition, BY ART MATTERS and the artist launched a call to collect "Horizons" from our audience. After receiving submissions, Maclennan used the collected Horizons and created a new work. The work is on display from October 1-16. The artist solicitation letter and shooting guide are attached.
"I would like to create a collective, continuous – potentially infinite – landscape film. I want to see what happens when we follow a horizon line. The instructions are simple:
Use a phone or a video camera, hold it horizontally and find a horizon line. It can be just a line – a break between up and down, foreground and background. Holding the camera steady, slowly pan from left to right and/or right to left. Try, if possible, to begin and end your clip with a dividing line visible in the middle of the shot – the horizon.
The horizon might be a distant view of hills or sea, or buildings, or sky – but equally, your landscape could be your kitchen counter, your bookshelf, the kerb, a leaf or rock. Your interior or internal landscape is perhaps the nearest to hand, the most vivid, the horizon that holds your attention right now.
Please send me your video and audio clips – between 5 and 45 seconds – and I will sew them together. Please choose the highest resolution settings on your camera. If you can, please also record the ambient sound, or you could record some other sounds or voices separately, to go with your horizon. Please send a few words to accompany your moving images, and importantly, include your location and name. If you wish to remain anonymous, please say so.
Thank you. I look forward to seeing your horizons!"
————Ruth Maclennan
2022.4.16 - 6.30 | Easy Come Easy Go
"Easy Come Easy Go" is often used to describe the unhesitating state of deciding to start a journey. It represents the physical instinct to break through restrictions and run towards freedom and reflects the wisdom of being able to react quickly and overcome difficulties. During a journey, people form new stories by projecting their own experiences and emotions into the still scenery. At the moment, "Arbitrary Doors" in the four elevator halls show two sets of works. Among them, Zhou Yuge, a Chinese base in the United States, drags her suitcase around to draw "moons" in the snow in front of her apartment and on the beach by Lake Michigan every winter and summer starting from 2020 to express nostalgia. Cheng Xinhao walks along the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway to the border, picking up a piece of gravel from the rails and carrying it with him every kilometre. He walks, writing and exploring his relationship with the land under his feet and body. Please come to the different elevator halls to watch the works:
On Exhibit in Hall 1 and 2:
Yuge Zhou
Moon Drawings
2020
Double videos
7’46’’, 13’34’’
On Exhibit in Hall 3 and 4:
Cheng Xinhao
To the Ocean
2020
Single-channel video
49’56’’
2022.2.12 - 4.15 | Right here, Right now
Up and Down, 2021
Yi Lian
Single Channel Video, Colour, Sound, 09'00''
Up and Down is filmed in the OōEli, which presents the experience of a security guard carrying a bucket and an umbrella as he moves through different spaces.
The artist's inspiration comes from a collective emergency repair event in a rainstorm that he learned when chatting with the security guard of the OōEli, and therefore applies the element of water to narrate throughout the entire film. "Up and down" correspond to the concept of the space - viewers can follow the security guard to shuttle through different spaces from high to low, feeling the openness of the roof tea garden, the comfort of the distant mountains, and the complex access to the basement, which is dark, damp and echo. The spaces of the OōEli are thus reassembled, which unfolds the rough spatial structures that bear the rich stories beneath the delicate surface, and reveals the vivid individual experiences behind the machine-like operating system. At the end of the film, the artist reflects his imagination of the streetwise on the smooth concrete wall to create a contradictory but poetic collision. Throughout the film, the artist metaphorically describes the process of life by expressing the space in terms of upper and lower, width and narrow, and dim and bright.
Screenshot from the artwork
In 2021, the Barometer present works along with the changing of solar terms, thus becoming a calendar made of video works connecting to the natural-body clock. Within the year, each presented work has been showing a specific moment in time, alerting us to the changes that are happening around us, and surprising us within the general cycle of urban life.
2022.1.20 - 2.03 | Great Cold
Time Sparking Light, 2020
Davide Vanacore
Single Channel Video, Colour, 04'35''
Inspired by avant-garde film pioneer Stan Brakhage, this work focuses on the creation of cinema from the dynamic interplay between time and light, which are the two fundamental elements that shape our visual experience. The work is characterised by overlays of abstract visual patterns onto the recognizable everyday scenes to question cinema’s capacity to lead us toward or away from reality.
Image: courtesy of the artist
2021.1.05 - 1.19 | Lesser Cold
You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore, 2018
Sun Park
Single-channel video, Colour, 10'00'' / 2018
The video was taken at sunset on a beach. The film has only one fixed shot, allowing waves and figures to move in and out of the spectator's view. As time went on, the sky grew dim until the picture was barely discernible -- a reminder of the cold wind, long nights, and of the mysterious shore of hope.
Image: courtesy of the artist
2021.12.21 - 2022.1.04 | Winter Solstice
Solstice, 2008
Neeta Madahar
Two-Channel Video, Colour, 24'07''
"Solstice" records the skies in suburban Wiltshire, England, on the winter solstice of 2006 and the summer solstice of 2007, and the two scenes are displayed in different elevator halls. The work was shot with long exposures, showing the movement of clouds and stars, quoting the "solstice" as a time unit defined by celestial changes.
The winter solstice marks the extreme length of darkness in the year, corresponding to the summer solstice. "Solstice" was shown here on the summer and winter solstices to mark the two climate nodes of the year.
Commissioned by FVU and Harewood House Trust in association with Aspex, Portsmouth. Supported by Arts Council England.
Image: courtesy of the artist
2021.12.07 - 12.20 | Greater Snow
White Night, 2020
Issam Taachit
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 07'12''
The events of the movie take place at the top of the high Aures Mountains and precisely in one of the tall Atlantic cedar trees. in those mountains and in the cold winter, when snow covers all the place, with light winds, the snow masses that accumulate on the tree fall, to roll on the mountain until it reaches the bottom, In front of a warm house ,it is divided into three balls forming a snowman, some beautiful events happen with a snowman and a girl in that house, for that nature do its last .
Image: courtesy of the artist
2021.11.23 - 12.06 | Light Snow
El paisaje esta vacio y el vacío es paisaje （The Landscape is Empty and Emptiness is Landscape）, 2017
Carla Andrade
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 15'00''
The empty landscape of the Atacama desert is presented to reflect the poet Dalchin Kim's words: "The landscape is empty and emptiness is landscape", meaning that things have no supposed value and therefore we do not need to recognise the landscape discriminately, in order to challenge the established power mechanism of the West. The artist intends to complete the narrative through the world view of Andean culture, that is, reflecting social life by depicting natural phenomena.
Image: courtesy of the artist
2021.11.07 - 11.22 | Start of Winter
Black Ocean, 2016
Liu Yujia
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 38'35''
Depicting landscapes destroyed and constructed, Black Sea is made up of short chapters that interweave Marco Polo and Kublai Khan's narratives, debates, and questions about imagined cities and landscapes. The audience can enter its constructed context, walk through it, get lost, and find one or more exits at a time.
Image: courtesy of the artist
2021.10.23 - 11.06 | First Forest
The Signal, 2017
Toby Tatum
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 11'40''
Toby Tatum’s film The Signal shares a cosmic message beamed from the sky, it meditates on the hallucinatory potential abiding in nature and invites us to consider our receptivity to extreme natural phenomena.
The Signal features an original soundtrack by composer Abi Fry.
Image: courtesy of Toby Tatum
2021.10.8 - 10.22 | Cold Dew
Giant Fur , 2018
Liang Yue
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 4'40''
The artist stares at the meadow and found that it is breathing.
Image: courtesy of Liang Yue
2021.9.23 - 10.7 | Autumnal Equinox
Disposable Scenery , 2018-19
Cosmo Wong
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 10'13''
The film was shot on a train in Europe. The artist recorded the scenery moving at a high speed outside the window and played it at a slow speed, leading us to shuttle between space and time, reality and fantasy.
Image: courtesy of Cosmo Wong
2021.9.7 - 9.22 | White Dew
Wind Blows at Seven Frames Per Second , 2015
Jason Moyes
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 1'55''
When it comes to white dew, the summer wind is gradually replaced by the winter wind. In "Wind Blows at Seven Frames Per Second", Jason Moyse presents a narration about the wind, deconstructing the messages conveyed by different types of "wind."
Image: courtesy of Jason Moyes
2021.8.23 - 9.6 | Limit of Heat
Night Swimming , 2019
Katie McFadden
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 12'05''
"Night Swimming" is an inconclusive film that focuses on the moments of meditation. Characters exist in a seemingly isolated digital world and explore our disconnection with nature by presenting the alienated nature of life within this controlled landscape. The work incorporates silent film and science fiction approaches from the history of cinema, discussing issues of power and identity on screen while simultaneously rejecting narrative as a non-linear work.
The film was shot on a Blackmagic micro, with vintage 16mm Kiev-U lenses.
Image: courtesy of Katie McFadden
2021.8.16 - 8.22 | Start of Autumn
So, hungry... , 2021
Smit Shah
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 1'11''
The crowd hurtle and carry away the melon as soon as the melon is slit into slices, while left someone behind...
Image: courtesy of Smit Shah
2021.7.17 - 2021.8.15｜The Barometer Special: Unlimited Time Company
In collaboration with Shou Ji Wan Wo, BY ART MATTERS 之馆 launched a special season of the Barometer project: "Unlimited Time Company".
The 24 solar term applies nature as the measurement of time scale. It combines the interrelated objects including the universe, the body, climate and spaces to arrange the content of life, indicating a time logic that is completely different from the urban working pace.
At present, the efficiency-oriented lifestyle seems to cut off the connection between us and the earth, and people begin to worry about the "insufficient" time. However, calibrated numbers are not the only tools for understanding time, and the meaning of time does not exist only in the utilitarian dimension. Based on this concept, Unlimited Time Company presents five video works and ackonwledges the value of time discovered by the artists, thus display the multidimensional perception and unique understanding of time.
2021.7.7 - 2021.7.16｜Slight Heat
Some Moments, the Night ends before the Dawn, 2019
Shen Ruilan
Two-Channel Video, Lightbox, Leaves, Colour, 10'40''
The artist recorded the tracks of a large number of flourishing plants, nocturnal flying insects and animals during her night tour in Hangzhou. By projecting them into the daily environment of the city, the artist intended to connect the narratives related to the characters' everyday experiences. These glowing plants appear, fade, and disappear in a slow temporal dimension, thus revive the illusion of the primal forces of nature in the post-industrial era.
Image: courtesy of Shen Ruilan
2021.6.21 - 2021.7.6｜Grain in Ear
Solstice, 2008
Neeta Madahar
Two-Channel Video, Colour, 24'07''
"Solstice" records the skies in suburban Wiltshire, England, on the winter solstice of 2006 and the summer solstice of 2007. The work consists of two high-resolution scenes, shot with long exposures, showing the movement of clouds and stars, quoting the "solstice" as a time unit defined by celestial changes. *Two scenes representing the summer solstice and winter solstice are screened in different elevator halls; feel free to explore.
Commissioned by FVU and Harewood House Trust in association with Aspex, Portsmouth. Supported by Arts Council England.
Image: courtesy of Neeta Madahar
2021.6.5 - 2021.6.20｜Grain in Ear
Waves, 2017
Vojtěch Domlátil
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 3'00''
Grain in Ear —— with beautiful field scenery, the busy farming season is upcoming.
"Waves" was shot in the landscape of the Czech Republic. Instead of complex processing techniques, the artist creates a pure, dynamic picture for gazing and meditation only by editing the scale of time and space. In this "wave" formed by compressed time, everything plays its part -- the swaying grass, the clouds, the hills and valleys, the sun, and ourselves.
Image: courtesy of Vojtěch Domlátil
2021.5.21 - 2021.6.4｜Lesser Fullness of Grain
Cascade, 2019
Zhang Wenxin
Single-Channel Video, 4'15''
In "Cascade," the video of a waterfall slowly forms a tunnel that rises and falls.
Image: courtesy of Zhang Wenxin
2021.5.5 - 2021.5.20｜Grain Rain
Can't Blink, 2018
Liang Yue
Single-Channel Video, Colour, 14''00'
At the beginning of summer, the plants are growing rapidly.
"Can't Blink" was shot in the early summer, with heart-shaped leaves jiggle in the sun to release oxygen. This scene comes across the artist during her residency in Umbria, Italy. The artist believes that these simple and vibrant elements can naturally heal people and become a relaxing and precious moment in memory.
Image: courtesy of Liang Yue
2021.4.20 - 2021.5.4｜Grain Rain
Umwelt, 2019
Shi Zheng
Four-channels video, Colour, loop
Grain Rain is the last solar term of spring. On the eve of the summer, everything grows and flourishes.
"Umwelt" is a digitally reconstructed landscape based on the sample of Dongping National Forest Park on Chongming Island. By "replanting" the forest using a computer programming system, the artist intends to observe nature from the perspective of a visual machine. In this intersecting process of artificial and natural, the continuous communication and conversion between object and energy imply the translation and reproduction of environmental changes in the context of human life.
This work consists of four acts, representing four different elements of the forest., and presented in the four elevator halls on the second floor. The audience is welcome to explore one by one.
Image: Courtesy of Shi Zheng
2021.4.4 - 2021.4.19｜Pure Brightness
Revisiting, 2019
Daniel & Clara
Video, Colour, 14' 35''
Clear and bright as the weather in Pure Brightness solar term, you can perceive nature by outings and walking.
Using their own life and experiences as the materials of their work, Daniel & Clara’s practice explores the mysterious territory where inner and outer realities meet. In “Revisiting” they return to Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire, the site of an earlier experience and an earlier film's location in order to look again. The two juxtaposed images present overlapping and misplaced travel trajectories in time or space, encouraging the viewer to consider the multi-layered nature of experience. "Walking" is one of Daniel & Clara's major creative methods. They collect inspiration from the experience of walking and travelling, documenting their life and travel, to explore the nature of perception and reality, raising questions of how we construct meaning from our experiences.
Image: courtesy of Daniel & Clara
2021.3.20 - 2021.4.3 | Vernal Equinox
Moonrise, 2018
Cheng Xinhao
Single channel video, Black and White, Slient, 4' 37''
The artist stood in a fixed position on the rock for one hundred minutes, during which the moon appeared from behind the distant mountains, gradually rose, and finally disappeared out of the picture. In the silent video, which is played at 20 times the speed, some of the general moving bodies become still while the moon's usually imperceptible motion is revealed. The artist applies the body as the medium to explore its reactions in an uncontrollable environment, points to the connection between the individual's memory of experience, related events and the macro world.
Image: courtesy of Cheng Xinhao
2021.3.5 - 3.19 | Awakening of Insects
Call for your singing, 2019
Chen Dan Di Zi
Four channel video, Colour, 26' 57''
During the "Awakening of Insects", nature creatures began to "wake up". However, surrounded by the urban sphere, we can hardly perceive the changes in nature at this time. In the process of urbanisation, gains and losses are always reciprocal -- urban expansion leads to the shrinking of natural territory; thus, fewer and fewer birds singing can appear in cities. "Call for your singing" was shot in the Liuhe Pagoda. Looking through the Liuhe Pagoda's windows, as birds' sound rises, the corresponding bird names are "filled" into the scene with the forest and urban buildings. The bird sounds were added to the video through a post-production process, as the artist intends to create an illusion to compensate for the absence of nature in the real world; and comfort the lonely people who are isolated from nature in the city.
This work consists of four acts, shot in four Windows of the Six Harmonies Pagoda, and presented in the four elevator halls on the second floor. The audience is welcome to explore one by one.
Image: courtesy of Chen Dan Di Zi
2021.2.18 - 3.4 | Start of Spring
Raindrops Click on the Sight
Tang Chao
Single channel video, Colour, 3' 21''
Raindrop Click on the Sight was inspired by a photo that was captured by the camera when the artist accidentally dropped his phone into a puddle. Here, the artist mimics the gaze of the human eye on raindrops through the lens: the perspective of the image is almost level with the water. It’s clear in places but blurred or paused in others. This creates the experience of creeping to see the rain and experiencing a trance-like state .
Image: courtesy of Tang Chao
2021.2.3 - 2.17 | Start of Spring
The Other Side of the River: Talking Flower, 2017
Chen Dan Di Zi
Single channel video, Colour, Silent, 2' 50''
"Start of Spring" represents the beginning of spring, signifying the thaw of the east wind and the revival of all things. The Barometer project presents Chen Dan Dizi's "The Other Side of the River: Talking Flower" during the Start of Spring in 2021. In the film, a wintersweet flower growing high on a branch moves gently under the push of the wind, refracting and cutting the sunlight. The artist translates the frequency of the flower's shaking into Morse code, with the hope of listening to them talk so as to explore the empathy that exists between our personal feelings and occasional situations that occur in nature. But the Morse code, without linguistic logic, also reveals the limits of human cognitive systems. The artist then raises the question: as humans, can we really understand nature?
Image: courtesy of Chen Dan Di Zi
--The barometer presents a work related to the current scene during each solar term in 2021. --
2021.1.1 - 2021.2.2
Everything I Have Is Yours, 2019
By Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive)
Single channel HD video, 30' 43'' (loop)
Everything I Have Is Yours is a film by British artist duo Eileen Simpson and Ben White. It intends to trace the cultural scene of the UK pop charts in their first decade.
As the first work presented by the Barometer project in 2021, Everything I Have Is Yours is a piece of music creation. It addresses the overlapping of personal memories and collective experience, as well as the decontextualisation and sharing of the private sphere. Most of the older musicians involved in the film participated in/witnessed the Greater Manchester music scene during its formative era. When the musicians play, the fragmented memory of shellac and vinyl is are built into new musical creations through digital technologies. As a result, Everything I Have Is Yours creates a vivid dialogue across the private, personal and public domains.
Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Contemporary Art Society, University of Salford Art Collection and Castlefield Gallery.
Image: screenshot of Everything I Have Is Yours
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