MadeIn Art Museum is honored to present Liu Yujia’s solo exhibition “Mountains Tell Mountains Boo” on Oct 28, 2023, featuring representative video works from different stages of her practice. Curator and scholar Wang Hongzhe hereby directs our attention to the narrative potential of the non-human elements in Liu's creations, where the abstruse meaning of life looms.
“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”
——Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Mountains of storytelling are the watershed between day and night, exhaustion and regeneration. In a quest to rid of the fatigue of individual existence, the artist sets off on a voyage, ventures into the hinterland, plucks and savors anecdotes, absorbing energy along the way. Inadvertently, she acquires the power to produce the pharmakon of our collective illness.
Liu Yujia’s work has long derived from film shooting during her travels, which, through prose and poetized moving image, arrives at the marginal landscape folded in between history and geography. The traveler sets foot as if in a painting, where the the Gobi desert, forests, rivers, and mountains unfold like a scroll. On a closer look, humans and spirits in the painting begin to develop and have a life of their own. They walk out of the two-dimensional canvas to tell their stories, tirelessly and plaintively.
In the exhibition, "mountains" serve as both reality and metaphor, pointing to the "counter-entropy" accumulated over a prolonged life time. “Counter-entropy” can automatically write stories that outperform any human narrator. In the mountains of storytelling, ginseng, hunters, as well as Taoist priests and shamans are nurtured and feed on “counter-entropy”, releasing spirit mediums to decompose the sufferings of the world of meaning and rescue the aging Princess of Kuqa from the reincarnation of discourse.
Entering the mountains of storytelling, with moving images as her art of hunting, the artist metamorphoses into a hunter, plucking ginseng; into a Taoist, comprehending life and death; into a shaman, calling for cure. Perhaps she has traveled never on foot but only in spirit, thus hearing the mountains’ narration, insight, and prophecy. She is then enlightened that reality is precisely the incubus, and that one must rip open the daylight and struggle to waken.
Together, let us venture into the mountains of storytelling, “leave before getting old”, wake up before getting old.
— Wang Hongzhe
Oct 13, 2023
没顶美术馆荣幸宣布于2023年10月28日推出艺术家刘雨佳个展“故事山脉”，呈现其于不同阶段的代表性影像作品。策展人、学者王洪喆邀请我们关注刘雨佳影像创作中的非人类因素的叙事潜能，其中潜藏着生命本身的奥义。
我们就像蝴蝶，飞翔在日光下，以为白昼是永恒。
——卡尔．萨根（Carl Sagan），《宇宙》
故事山脉，是白昼与黑夜、衰竭与更生的分水岭。为摆脱个体生命的困顿，艺术家出发，远行，深入腹地，采摘异闻，品尝啖咽，摄取能量，修为在不经意间增进，吐纳出疗愈集体病症的丹丸（pharmakon）。
长期以来，刘雨佳以旅行拍摄为方法，经由散文和诗化影像，抵达处于历史和地理褶皱中的边缘地景。在旅行中，戈壁、森林、河流和高山如卷轴般铺展，远行者如画中游。仔细辨认，画中的人鬼神就逐渐显影，活了过来，从二维画布里走出，如泣如诉，向我们娓娓道来。
在这次展览中，“山脉”同时作为实在和隐喻，指向由漫长的生命时间所积累起来的“逆熵”。“逆熵”会自动编写故事，胜过任何优秀的人类讲述者。故事山脉里，长出了人参、猎人、道士和萨满……它们吸取“逆熵”为养料，释放灵媒，以分解意义世界的苦难，将衰老的库车王妃解救出话语轮回。
走进故事山脉，以影像作为捕猎技艺，艺术家幻化成猎手，采摘人参；幻化成道人，参悟生死；幻化成萨满，召唤治愈。也许，艺术家从未旅行，她只是神游到此，听到山脉讲述、晓彻和预言，于是便顿悟了现实才是梦魇，必须撕开那白昼，奋力地从梦中醒来。
让我们共赴故事山脉，“在变老之前远去”，在变老之前醒来。
——王洪喆
2023年10月13日
Liu Yujia： Mountains Tell Mountains Boo
刘雨佳：故事山脉
Curator: Wang Hongzhe 策展人：王洪喆
Between 2022 to 2023, the artist embarked on four filming trips into the Changbai Mountains and the upstream region of the Songhua River. She captured documentary footage of activities such as logging, hunting, ginseng digging, fishing, and more, using video mediums like 16mm film, digital camera, drone, and GoPro. Throughout this process, the artist not only experienced the changing seasons of nature but also encountered immense challenges posed by extreme weather conditions, particularly the harsh cold, which tested her physical and mental resilience as well as the filming process itself. The film A Darkness Shimmering in the Light portrays the frozen Songhua River as a gateway to a journey through time and space. By integrating segments from ethnography of Siberia and the Xing'an Mountains, Northeastern literature, and folklore into the documentary footage, the artist constructs a series of fictional ecological narratives. The rivers, mountains, forests, and ice at the border become a constant yet ever-transforming stage, while wind and snow serve as poetic mediums that connect the past with the present. Plants, animals and humans intertwine and coexist on equal footing. The film endeavors to unravel the binary oppositions between nature and culture, science and mythology, technology and ecology, and humans and non-humans, employing a poetic language that develops a sense of empathy between the artist and the natural world.
2022 年至 2023 年间，艺术家在长白山和松花江上游地区进行了四次旅行拍摄。 她利用 16 毫米电影胶片、数码摄像、无人机、GoPro 等多种影像媒介拍摄了伐木、狩猎、采集人参、捕鱼等大量纪录影像。这个过程中，艺术家不仅亲历了自然的变化，也遭遇了极寒等极端气候因素给身心以及拍摄带来的巨大挑战。 影片《微光渐暗》把冰封的松花江视为一个时空穿梭的入口。通过向纪录影像中融入西伯利亚地区和兴安岭地区民族志、东北文学和民间神话传说的片段， 艺术家虚构了一系列的生态故事：边境上的河流、山脉、森林和冰层是恒定又变幻的舞台；风雪作为诗意的介质勾连起过往与当下；动植物和人类平等地缠绕共生。影片试图以诗化的语言去破解自然 - 文化、科学 - 神话、技术 - 生态、 人 - 非人之间的二元对立，其中也洋溢着艺术家与自然万物之间的共情。
In the vast boreal forests of Northeast Asia, a flickering, elusive and scattered light embodies the soul of forest ecology. Beneath this dappled light, the data and energy of life pass between members of the forest biome. Liu Yujia employs a macro lens to capture the light beneath the forest canopy, as well as the ecology surrounding the mushrooms. These micro understory ecosystems are amplified into a different kind of jungle, offering us a clear view of the symbiotic dance between mushrooms, moss, insects, and soil.
东北亚的森林里弥散着一种摇曳不定的散射光，那是森林生态的灵魂所在。林下种群在这种明暗相间的光里交换着生命的信息和能量。刘雨佳用微距镜头追逐着林下光，也追逐着林下蘑菇周围的生态。这些低矮的林下生态被放大为另一种丛林，让我们清晰地看到蘑菇与苔藓、昆虫、土壤之间的共生之舞。
In the Changbai Mountains where the Yalu River, Songhua River and Tumen River meet lives an old witch doctor of Korean ethnicity. She has practiced her religion there for seventeen years, gathering medicinal herbs and healing people. Over the years, she has established an intimate and mutually respectful relationship with the flora of the mountain. In the film, the old woman sits on a kang (heated bed) and recounts to the camera her experience as a spiritual practitioner, as well as numerous stories that touch on various plant and animal species. Her vivid accounts have a strangely mystical quality and are peppered with touching details about China’s rural Northeast. Her anecdotes have an everyday sensibility to them and unfold against the backdrop of this land of trans-species coexistence.
长白山的三江源头(鸭绿江、松花江、图们江)住着一位朝鲜族女巫医。 她在长白山的森林里修炼了 17 年，采集草药，疗愈世人。长期以来，她与山中的动植物建立起不分彼此的亲密关系。影片中， 婆婆坐在炕上面对镜头讲述了她的修行经历，还有她众多的多物种故事。她的生动讲述带有奇异的神秘主义色彩，又糅杂着东北农村的琐碎和温馨。这种生活化的日常质感是跨物种共存在民间的底色和土壤。
LIU Yujia’s latest projects are all related to the “borders” and the regions inhabited by the ethnic minority groups. She often gets her inspiration from conducting long-term research and coming into contact with various people in these areas. In her latest work, The Pale View of Hills (2018), we observe in extreme quietnesss the life of a local woman, through the kind of long takes typical of Chantal Akerman. This approach generates a middle ground between fiction and documentation: we seem to be seeing all the details of this particular woman’s life, but in the meantime her mysterious past is shadowed from us; in other words, the protagonist appears to be “living evidence” and we are witnessing the remains of her history and how it gradually dissolves. The spaces in the film are worthy of particular heed, since they often constitute conflicting relationships: quiet living spaces are contrasted with bustling display spaces, the monochromatic Gobi Desert with polychromatic interiors, and ethnic decor with delocalized public spaces (such as the billiards room and the dance hall). These spatial conflicts compose the rhythm of this extremely quiet video, and suggest a perturbated multiplicity of time here.
刘⾬佳近期的计划都与中国的“边疆”，与少数民族地区相关。她往往进⾏长时间的调研⼯作，在当地与不同⼈群进⾏接触，以从中获取灵感。在其刚完成的作品《远⼭淡景》（2018）中，我们透过Chantal Akerman 式的长镜头，以⼀种极度安静的⽅式观察了⼀位当地⼥性的⽣活。这种⽅式造成了⼀种介于虚构与纪录之间的状态：我们貌似看到了这位⾝份特殊的⼥性⽣活的全部细节，但又被遮蔽于她神秘的过去之外；或者说，⼥主⼈公仿佛是“活着的证物”，⽽我们正在⽬睹那段历史的遗存与逐渐消逝。影⽚中的空间需要特别注意，它们往往构成彼此冲突的关系：安静的⽣活空间与喧闹的展⽰空间，单⾊调的⼽壁与⾊彩丰富的室内，民族化的装饰与公共空间（台球厅）的去地域化。这种空间冲突形成了这部极为沉静的电影的节奏变化，提⽰着时间在此的多重性。
Two hunters sit in the mixed coniferous and broadleaf forest of Changbai Mountain while telling their stories. These are multi-species stories from their hunting in the early days to digging of ginseng and gathering of mountain products after hunting is prohibited.
两个猎人坐在长白山的针阔叶混交林里讲故事。从早期打猎，到禁猎后他们跑山挖人参，采集山货的多物种故事。
A female Taoist priest in the Sanshen Cave of Changbai Mountain recounts, in front of a camera, the story of her conversion from Buddhism to Taoism.
长白山的三神洞里的一位女道士，对着镜头讲述了她是如何从早期信仰佛教到后来改信道教的故事。
The video records the trance ritual of the Tongliao shamans in Inner Mongolia.
影像记录了内蒙古通辽萨满的降神仪式。
Wake Up Before Getting Old records three major journeys of the artist’s film shooting during her travels with 16mm film: the declining residential area of Haigou Gold Mine, the largest in Jilin Province; the ecological and political landscape surrounding the China-North Korea border; and the hunters’ search for and gathering of ginseng in the mixed coniferous and broadleaf forest of Changbai Mountain in the summer. The fleeting relics of the Anthropocene scattered throughout the film remind us, like fragments of a dream, that “such savagery is as much a throwback to the past as it is a leap forward in time, dragging old, barbaric ways of treating life into the contemporary landscape.”
《在变老之前醒来》用16毫米胶片纪录了艺术家旅行拍摄中的三段重要旅程：吉林省最大的金矿——海沟金矿没落的居民生活区、中朝边境的生态政治景观、以及一段猎人在夏季长白山的针阔叶混交林里寻找、追逐与采集人参的故事。影片中遍布的稍纵即逝的人类世遗迹，就像梦境碎片一样提醒我们，“这种蛮荒既是对过去的回溯，也是在时间上的跃进，它将旧的对待生命的野蛮方式带进当代景观之中。”
Mushrooms
2023
Single channel 4K film
Color, stereo sound
13' 14’'
蘑菇
2023
单通道 4K 影像
彩色，立体声
13 分 14 秒
https://vimeo.com/933878752
Password:666666
Tales From the Confluence of Three Rivers
2023
Double channel 4K film
Color, stereo sound
48' 40"
三江源头故事集
2023
双通道 4K 影像
彩色，立体声
48 分 40 秒
https://vimeo.com/866256253
Password:666666
https://vimeo.com/866232352
Password:666666
The Pale View of Hills
2018
Single channel 4K video
Color, sound
38' 26"
远山淡景
2018
单通道4K录像
彩色，有声
38分26秒
https://vimeo.com/313772386
Password:666666
Two Hunters
2023
Single channel video
6' 10''
两个猎人
2023
单通道录像
6分10秒
One Taoist Priest
2023
Single channel video
8' 39''
一个道士
2023
单通道录像
8分39秒
Two Shamans
2023
Double channel video
9' 30''，5' 42''
两个萨满
2023
双通道录像
9分30秒 ，5分42秒
Wake Up Before Getting Old
2023
Three-channel video installation
2K digital video converted from 16mm film
Color, w/o sound
12' 19'', 14' 34'', 3' 00''
在变老之前醒来
2023
三通道影像装置
16mm 胶片转 2K 数字影像
彩色，无声
12分19秒， 14分34秒， 3分0秒
EXHIBITION VIEW 展览现场
Artwork 作品
A Darkness Shimmering in the Light
2023
Single channel 4K film
2K digital video converted from 16mm film
Color, 5.1 surround sound
64' 17”
微光渐暗
2023
单通道 4K 影像
16mm 胶片转 2K 数字影像
彩色， 5.1 声道
64 分 17 秒
https://vimeo.com/933830288
Password:666666
