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Thirteen, a collection of videos by Chinese artists (thirteen of them!), recently ended its run at PS1 in Queens.
Like Reprocessing Reality, Thirteen -- a group exhibit of videos from Chinese artists at PS1 in Queens -- closed a day or two after I was there. At the time, PS1's entrance contained a sort of teaser for the exhibit: to the sound of vicious, howling wind, a video mounted at painting height next to the reception desk panned over a black-and-white map tagged with flickering orange and grey dots. Entering the exhibit itself, the first thing you see -- shown in darkness, alone in its own room -- is a red-orange lantern carried through streets at night, seen in fragmentary glimpses. This lulls you into a predictable lush orientalist mode, so that once you're into the next room and onward you're slammed into a different world: koi snuff it in a washing machine, newscasters ramble, subways rumble, a cheerful, manic-looking tap dancer and martial artist is ignored cruelly by the people he dances for in the park, but doesn't seem to mind. Black-and-white characters flick ashes into their open flies, a detached, deliberate-looking gentleman carefully arranges filmy strips of pink fabric in a forest and hangs himself from a tree. Artists are 8gg (team consisting of Jiang Haiqing and Fu Yu, Beijing); Cui Xiuwen (Beijing); Dong Wensheng (Changzhou); Cao Fei (b. 1978 in Guangzhou, lives in Guangzhou); Hu Jieming (Shanghai); Huang Xuaopeng (Guangzhou); Li Songhua (Beijing); Liang Yue (Beijing and Shanghai); Lu Chunsheng (Shanghai); Ma Yongfeng (Beijing); Meng Jin (Chong Qing); Xu Tan (Shanghai and Guangzhou); and Xu Zhen (Shanghai).
The copyright of the article Thirteen in Multimedia Arts is owned by Andrea Donderi. Permission to republish Thirteen in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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